


don't carry it all

by infinitebees



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 02:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10233782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: first meetings, first fights, first victories.just writing out my own da:o canon and all the moments significant to my characters (that is, veriel tabris, thana mahariel, and leonora cousland). just fixing dragon age's writing one shitty fic at a time.fic title from "don't carry it all" by the decemberists. its a very da:o song





	

**Author's Note:**

> yes hi hello this is a bit of a mess but i kind of wanted to write out the full game? in a sense, at least. there are moments that stand out to me in the game and i want to write them the way i want to see them. im really excited to write more about thana and leonora, but also excited to write more in-universe tabris since my lengthiest work involving her was an au 0: anyway hmu @knifedadsgayestdaughter on tumblr
> 
> and please do forgive my gratuitous use of line breaks. switching between points of view is tricky but altogether necessary for this fic, i feel

The first time he sees her, she still hasn’t cleaned the blood from her hair — that much is obvious even from the distance from him at which she stands. It’s distracting, to say the least, but more distracting than that are her eyes, which flash with a ferocity Alistair has never known. It’s frightening, and it’s beautiful, and it’s enough to make him forget, for a moment, that he’s in the middle of a rather heated argument with a mage that, Maker bless him, absolutely _insists_ on shooting the messenger.

The mage’s voice reaches him on the tail end of his sentence. Alistair snaps out of his brief daze just in time to see pure hate flashing across the other’s face. Well, he supposes he can’t blame him. What did the Revered Mother expect, asking a would-be Templar to tell a mage what to do? Alistair hates situations like these; he’d grown up learning to tell people exactly what they wanted to hear, and now here he is doing just the opposite of that just to assuage his own Andrastian guilt.

“I’m sorry, what was it you were saying?” Alistair finally asks with what he hopes is a sufficiently apologetic smile.

The mage only shakes his head. “Forget it. Consider your message delivered, Templar.”

And with that he’s gone, leaving Alistair alone with the frightening, beautiful (frighteningly beautiful? beautifully frightening?) woman who had distracted him in the first place.

“You know,” he says before he can stop himself, “one thing I love about the Blight is how it brings people together.”

He’s had better starts, but he doesn’t miss the way her mouth almost twitches into a smile.

The woman snorts, shakes her head once so her badly-cut hair is out of her face. “No kidding,” she says, her voice low and a bit rough. It sounds strange, and as she’s striding towards him, confident and unafraid, he thinks, _Not beautiful._ Not in the conventional sense, anyway — her eyes aren’t soft enough for such a word, her mouth is wide, her features seem like they don’t go together, as though each part of her face had been shaped independently. Frightening, though, yes — beautifully so.

He realizes who she is once they’re face to face. “You’re the new recruit.” The woman nods, silent. “I hope you’re not a mage.”

“Call me Tabris,” she says. “Non-mage, unfortunately at your service. You must be Alistair.”

He holds his hand out. She doesn’t take it.

He’s had better starts, but he’s had worse starts, too.

* * *

 

In the Korcari Wilds, Tabris feels although she’s stopped being Tabris and has again become a reaper, a killer, the person she was in the arl’s estate. Her daggers slice through the flesh of darkspawn with ease and she revels in the cries they give as they die, even as Jory cowers and Daveth makes a show of being disgusted by the mess. She takes a small amount of pride in the fact that she can feel Alistair staring after her in what she’s pretty sure is awe. 

There’s a certain kind of joy in being underestimated, unaccounted for, and proving them wrong anyway.

Collecting the blood is easy enough (if anything, _avoiding_ the blood is the real trouble), but finding the Wardens’ cache is substantially more difficult, mostly because Duncan’s directions had been a bit too vague considering they were in a place where nearly every tree looked the same and the ground was covered in a cold haze that made it difficult to find one’s way. Tabris is used to the city, where the trees are sparse and the crowds lead the way to whatever’s important. The deeper they trek into the wilds, moreover, the more darkspawn they encounter. Alistair, who earlier had tried to make small talk with the three of them, now looks tense and focused. He’d mentioned earlier that he could sense them; it must be what he’s doing now.

He manages to give the warning just in time for Daveth to narrowly avoid being run through with a hurlock’s sword, and suddenly they’re surrounded by a group of four darkspawn. Alistair is the first to move, hitting the nearest one with a shield bash before it has time to cast any magic. Surprisingly, Jory is the next to recover from his shock and he rushes at the alpha hurlock, brandishing his sword with a competence that Tabris frankly hadn’t expected from him. Daveth and Tabris are left to handle the two gunlock, who prove to be easy enough to kill, although Tabris can feel her energy waning as the hours of hiking begin to take their toll.

She’s just finished off the last one when from her left there’s a shout that she only recognizes as her name when she becomes aware of the weight of Alistair’s hand on her shoulder. Fear, irrational and buzzing like an angry, trapped wasp, shoots through her and she steps to the side, holding him in a tight grasp that would maybe have broken the wrist of someone weaker.

“Don’t _touch_ me, shem,” she snarls. Then it shoots through her again like an arrow — actually it _is_ an arrow now, lodged in her shoulder and shot from a short distance by a genlock they’d somehow managed not to notice earlier. Tabris stifles a cry of pain against her hand, having freed Alistair’s. Before she can strike back — which she dearly wants to do, enraged at having been caught by surprise like this — Jory dispatches it quite cleanly with his greatsword. The thing’s head rolls back down the hill with a sick sort of squishing sound that makes Tabris flinch.

“I was trying to tell you to look out,” Alistair grumbles when they’re starting to move on.

Tabris glares up at him — Maker damn him, why does he have to be so tall. “I saw it. And I would have been _fine_ if you’d kept your hands off me.” It’s a lie, and she knows Alistair can tell, but it’s a small balm to her pride as she painfully pulls the arrow from her shoulder.

She doesn’t speak for the rest of the journey back, too angry with herself for having missed something so obvious, and Alistair speaks only to Jory and Daveth when Morrigan escorts them out of the Wilds. Tabris is at least grateful the shem can take a hint. As she walks she toys with the petals of the beautiful flower she’d found before the ambush, hoping that she can do _some_ good while she’s here.

* * *

 

By the time they return for the Joining, Alistair finds himself hoping that, above anyone else, this woman survives. If anything she’s the one that shows the most promise. That’s not to say that he dislikes Daveth — for all his shameless flirting may annoy him, he sees in him a will to live and do _something_. Jory is… fine. But for all he doesn’t mind them, he isn’t entirely confident that they’ll live. Tabris, though — Tabris might.

 

And she does. 

* * *

 

Tabris wakes feeling cold, despite the fact that Alistair is holding her tightly. The warmth of his hands barely bleeds through, a small comfort contrasted with the terrible things she’s seen. But she comes back to herself quickly enough and squirms out of Alistair’s grip. When she does, she finds that her limbs burn as though suffused with cold fire.

“Sorry,” Alistair mumbles sheepishly, crawling back and onto his feet. Tabris doesn’t miss the look of relief in his eyes.

“Did Daveth and Jory…?” Tabris looks between Alistair and Duncan; past events still feel hazy in her mind, clouded by piercing red eyes. Duncan nods.

“Somebody died at my Joining, too,” Alistair pipes up. “Just one, though. Then again, who knows whether Jory would have survived…”

By now Duncan has moved between two dilapidated pillars. “If you feel you’ve recovered sufficiently,” he says, obviously uncomfortable with the trajectory of the conversation, “we’re soon to meet with the king and his men. When you’re ready we can find them at the center of camp.”

“He wants to meet with us?” Alistair repeats incredulously. It’s fair — they’re both rather new to the Order, though Alistair has surely been here longer than Tabris. Tabris hadn’t expected to see more of Cailan after his enthusiastic greeting at Ostagar’s gates. To say nothing of Loghain, whom she actually had hoped to see again. His encouraging words had bolstered her against the trials that had been to come; it made her wonder what he’d been like at the height of the rebellion.

She can remember, as a child, playing at Fereldans and Orleans with her cousins. Usually she would insist upon pretending to be her mother the Night Elf, using fallen twigs as arrows with which she would pelt poor Soris, always relegated to the role of king Meghren. Occasionally, though, when Shianni pestered her enough, Tabris let her play Adaia and instead became the Hero of the River Dane.

She would never say as much to the teryn, of course, but still she wants to know the man and learn more about him. Perhaps she could even find out more about her mother’s days in the rebellion. So, despite her lingering fatigue and her growing misgivings about the coming battle, Tabris follows after Duncan to the center of the camp.

 

* * *

 

It’s a shit job, but secretly Tabris is grateful not to have to put herself in the line of fire, so to speak. Alistair, on the other hand, is obviously anxious. He keeps turning a token over and over in his hand, starting and stopping conversation, occasionally completely missing anything she says. 

“Something the matter?” Tabris asks, glancing sidelong at him as they approach the tower. She tells herself it’s just because she doesn’t want to have to follow someone who isn’t fully present, because that’s exactly the kind of danger she doesn’t need.

Alistair startles and looks down. “Oh,” he says. “It’s just — I don’t like it. Being so far away from everything. Feels like there’s nothing I can do.”

“S’not like you’ve been a Warden long,” Tabris points out. “I mean, as far as I know, anyway. You’re a junior member or whatever, yeah?” Admittedly, though, she does sympathize. From what little time she spent with Alistair and Duncan together it was obvious that Alistair cared for the older Warden. That, at least, is something Tabris can relate to. So she adds: “I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is the sort of thing we’re cut out to do, and fighting’s the sort of thing they’re cut out to do.”

Alistair glances around restlessly, obviously trying to hear the sound of the fighting starting. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. “And hey, here’s one thing I can’t mess up, right?”

It’s then that a mage comes stumbling towards them from the direction of the tower, nearly tripping over his own robes in his hurry to find someone. 

_Looks like it’s already gone pear-shaped_ , Tabris thinks to herself. _Typical._


End file.
